Michigan's EV-charging protection for homeowners is buried in the solar statute
Michigan's EV-charging protection for homeowners is buried in the solar statute
2026-09-12 · Michigan · Compliance
What happened. Michigan boards asking whether the state has a “right to charge” law keep getting told no. The answer is more useful than that: Michigan has no standalone EV-charging statute, but electric vehicle supply equipment is named in the Homeowners' Energy Policy Act's list of protected improvements, and has been since the act took effect on 2 April 2025.1
Where it sits in the statute
Section 3 of 2024 PA 68 defines “energy-saving improvement or modification” by list. Electric vehicle supply equipment appears in that list alongside clotheslines, air-source and ground-source heat pumps, insulation, rain barrels, reflective roofing, energy-efficient appliances, solar water heaters, energy-efficient windows and insulation materials.
Section 5 then does the work. Any provision of an association's governing documents that prohibits — or requires association approval for — a member replacing, maintaining, installing or operating one of those improvements is “invalid and unenforceable as contrary to public policy.” The same section covers auxiliary changes needed to install one, and bars a local unit of government from conditioning its own approval on the association's.
What that does and does not give a Michigan owner
It removes the approval gate for equipment the owner installs on what is theirs. It does not do the three things a genuine right-to-charge statute does. There is no obligation on the association to grant access to a common-element parking space, no allocation of electrical capacity, no cost-and-insurance framework of the kind California, Colorado and Florida have written.
The gap is the parking lot, and it is the whole problem
Section 13 excludes common areas from the act. In a Michigan attached condominium, the parking is almost always a common element — general common element for open lots, limited common element for an assigned space or carport. That is precisely where a condominium owner needs to charge.
So the practical distribution of the protection in Michigan is:
- Detached home in an HOA, charger in the owner's own garage: squarely protected. A covenant requiring board approval is unenforceable.
- Site condominium unit with its own attached garage: protected on the same reasoning, subject to the unsettled question of whether the act reaches condominiums at all.
- Attached condominium, assigned limited common element space: outside the act. Governed by the master deed's modification provisions and, in practice, by whether the board will grant a licence and an electrical easement.
- Attached condominium, unassigned common parking: entirely a matter of board discretion and master-deed amendment thresholds.
That is close to the inverse of where the demand is. The owners who most need association cooperation to charge are the ones the statute does not reach.
The route that does exist runs through the utility, not the covenant
For a Michigan association that wants chargers in a shared lot, the money is in utility make-ready programmes, and those are set at the Public Service Commission rather than in Lansing. The MPSC adopted a framework for Transportation Electrification Plans by order of 23 January 2025 in Case No. U-21492, requiring regulated electric utilities to file TEPs covering planned investments, customer incentives and programme expenditures, and to refile every two years.2
Consumers Energy and DTE Electric have both filed, and both must file again in 2026 under the new requirements, in Case No. U-21538. Multifamily and condominium make-ready allowances for the next two years are being written in that docket now. A board planning a charging project has more to gain from tracking it than from re-reading its master deed.
What the current state of the law means for a board
Three things, in order. Strike or stop enforcing any approval requirement that reaches an owner's own garage — it is void as to covered associations and enforcing a void provision is how fee-shifting cases start. Second, decide the common-element question deliberately rather than by default: a written charging policy setting out licence terms, metering, insurance and cost allocation is not required by any Michigan statute, and is the only thing standing between the board and an ad hoc decision per owner. Third, put the utility programme, not the statute, at the centre of any shared-infrastructure plan.
What to watch next
Whether the 2026 TEP filings carry a dedicated multifamily and condominium make-ready allocation, and at what level. Michigan has repeatedly seen right-to-charge bills introduced and not passed; nothing in the 2025–2026 session would change the common-element position.
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